Tag Archives: new year’s resolutions

New Year’s Goals

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

It’s been a rough year. Between home drama, moving in april, worrying about my husband’s health and him being in and out of the emergency room, I’m not where I had hoped to be this year. But I’ll give myself a break because I’ve worked hard and haven’t given up. Checking over my goals for last year:

– Reading goals: Read a novel eligible for the auroras and vote in them. Read a debut novel. Read an author I haven’t read before. Read another book in at least one series I started. Read a novel by an author I know in person. I think i got all of these, Samantha Beiko’s debut novel The Lake And the Library, and Chad Ginther’s sequel Tombstone Blues both count as novels by authors I know in person; an author I haven’t read before: Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, and another book in a series I started: Kinslayer and Endsinger by Jay Kristoff. 

– The usual: Stay happily married and not die. No surprises here. 

– Get my commercial pilot’s license. Did not make this one, but I have made progress, building time and passing my commercial written exam. 

– Get my multi-IFR rating. Commercial license first. 

– Finish Skybound. Got this one. 

– Get a solid start on revising another novel. Started Earthbound, the sequel to Skybound.

So I didn’t do as bad as I thought. I haven’t flown as much because I’ve been under a lot of stress, and that’s not a good way to learn. I got some aerobatics training in, and that was fun. I needed something to challenge me.

Plus, I’ve got a short story coming out in an anthology, and the Chiseries event coming up.

Anyway, my new goals for this year:

– Stay happily married and not die.

– Do my three hundred nautical mile trip requirement for my commercial license.

– Get my commercial licence.

– Get a good ways through revisions on Skybound.

– Write a short story for that idea I came up with inspired by the documentary “Blackfish”.

– Reading: I think I want to get back to reading more female authors again. I also want to get through a bunch of novels I’ve had kicking around on my TBR list – The Name of the Wind being one major one, I need to get to, because people keep raving about it, and we have it and the second book.

It’ll be a busy year. We very well might be moving again at some point, but with Chiseries in a week, and Athena’s Daughters coming out this year, I think 2015 is getting off to a good start.

New Year’s 2014

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

The Traditional New Years post. Lets start with last year’s goals and how I did:

– Get a good ways into revisions on another novel. This is going to be either Handless or The Box – I haven’t decided yet, but once I do, it’ll be a shit ton of work. – I did none of this. 

– Win Nano for 5th time running. – nope. 

– Reading goals: mixing it up this year – I want to read at least one debut novel within the year it was published (missed this one, by 8 days – Thunder road was published on sept 4 2012, and I finished reading it on sept 12 2013), at least one aurora eligible novel (Got this one), at least one novel written by an author I know in person (got this one), finish at least one series I started reading (likely the hunger games trilogy, I’m on the last one)(Finished the Hunger Games), and at least one classic novel (I think The Warlord of the Air qualifies.)

– I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up. Which is good, because I’m twenty-nine and that time rolls around faster than you know. I’ve never been entirely happy with the tech support job, and there’s obviously a good chance that I may never be able to quit my day job completely. I need a day job that I have some passion for. Towards that, I resolve to start flight school. This will likely start in april, when my hours at work go down, and the integrated courses start at Harv’s Air. – The integrated courses didn’t work out, but that’s not a big deal, and didn’t stop me. Got my private licence in three months and am time building for my commercial. 

That last one is huge and has swallowed up everything else.

Anyway, I also get to give myself kudos for other things I’ve done this year. Mostly flying wise. There’s been a lot of firsts.

I started lessons – that in itself is a big step. Then there was my first solo, and then winning the first solo award. And getting my licence. Taking my first passenger flying, for his first time. Doing short little cross country flights, and building up to longer ones. Getting comfortable with being in Class C airspace. Taildragger checkout. Night rating. Being told I should go practice spins solo.

I became the legal owner of my first car. It’s a 93 Buick Le Sabre, originally owned by my grandfather, inherited by my grandmother, gifted to my father, and then gifted to me. Legally gifted to me. It’s coming out of my inheritance from my grandma, who’s 93 and still kickin’, but she wants to give us grandchildren the help we need when we need it most, and I’m living at the far end of every bus route right now, and there are no buses that will take me to St. Andrews to go flying, so I need a car right now. It gives her a lot of satisfaction to be able to be here to see the things she’s given her grandchildren put to use.

I also got a good ways into a new YA novel, called Skybound, and have ideas for books two and three in the trilogy (The Onesky Trilogy). And titles. Kickass titles, to be revealed as I write them.

My finished novel, recently renamed “Redwing”, is done the most recent round of revisions, and at Keycon an editor invited me to submit it, based on the opening page.

Also at Keycon, did some panels, got some attention, had people chasing me down to ask if I had anything published that they could buy, based on hearing me participate in a panel on dieselpunk.

Wrote a couple of short stories – though still working on selling them.

Overall, I’ve done pretty good, so I’m not going to beat myself up over not getting into revisions or winning Nano.

Also, I have succeeded in not killing myself or anyone else.

It’s been a good year. For a lot of it, I felt like I was running full tilt because if I stopped, the fates would notice I was happy. Because this is me, and Lindsay’s supposed to be happy with simple, small pleasures, and learning to fly is far too big to escape their notice. And as I kept going, I started to think if I just keep running, maybe fate won’t catch me. And eventually I got  to the point where I had it set in my mind that I was stronger than whatever had kept me from chasing my dreams in the past. And I started to realize what had kept me from it in the past was my own belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy. I’d internalized the many times my mother told me, “You don’t always get what you want.” (That line made it into Skybound.)

Every time I’ve ever really wanted something, I’ve had to fight for it. And I think I always knew this one would be a big fight, and maybe I was just waiting until I had the strength for it, because it was a fight that would break my heart to lose.

So this year’s goals (calling them goals, and not resolutions, because that sounds more positive – it’s about accomplishing things, not resolving to stop doing things):

– Reading goals: Read a novel eligible for the auroras and vote in them. Read a debut novel. Read an author I haven’t read before. Read another book in at least one series I started. Read a novel by an author I know in person.

– The usual: Stay happily married and not die.

– Get my commercial pilot’s license.

– Get my multi-IFR rating.

– Finish Skybound.

– Get a solid start on revising another novel.

Humble goals, I know. I think I succeeded in taking 2013, kicking it in the balls and beating it senseless until it cried. In 2014 I hope to start getting some career things straightened out, and of course I’m always hoping to hear back from agents. Wish me luck on soaring through 2014 safely.

New Years Resolutions 2012

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

A few years now, I’ve been posting my new year’s resolutions on my livejournal, and since that’s all but dead at this point, ditched for my website blog, I’ll post them here.

First, last year’s results:

– I’m through with surviving. This year I want to live. – I’m calling this a success.

– Remain happily married another year (this one stays the same.) – Still married. Still happy. Still same man, even.

– Stop being so hard on myself for not spending more time sewing, not playing my guitar, not writing enough short fiction, or not doing anything that doesn’t matter that much to me. I love writing, and novels is what I’m good at. – I didn’t write anything, or draw anything, sew anything, or play my guitar at all this last year, and screw it, I got a ton of writing done, and I’m quite proud of my accomplishments.

– Keep a tidier house – it can always get better. – marginal improvement on last year.

– Get out of debt. – fail.

– Eat better/sleep more. (shouldn’t be hard with the new job.) – Success – even more so than I expected, since the DH and I started a new nutrition plan, and he’s lost 30 lbs, and I’ve lost 10.  I wasn’t quite overweight, but another three or four lbs from where I started before the diet, and I would technically have been. The DH is nearly down to a healthy weight, and the lifestyle changes that have got us there are sustainable.

– Get The Eyelet Dove to at least second draft. – I’m going to give myself this one, even through it’s not really at second draft. I’m most of the way through Holly Lisle’s “How To Revise Your Novel” course, and it’s been an awesome help with streamlining a tough revision. Promising a review of the course once I’m done. But the reason I’m giving myself this one, is because normally I would do a third and a fourth draft most likely, and with this course, it should be at final draft at the end, and the amount of work I’ve put in at this point is about what I had, last January, expected to put into a second draft.

– Finish NaNoWriMo again, for a third time. – Success.

– Finish a first draft of my Handless Maiden story idea. – I don’t think I can wait for that to be my 2011 nano novel, so theoretically I should have 2 first drafts by the end of the year, and lots of editing to do in 2012. – Almost. I’m about 3/4 through.

– In the event that I get “the call”, drop all of the previous three, and do whatever Sheila Gilbert wants me to. – No word on my submission to Sheila Gilbert, but I did get a bite from an agent that was super exciting, even though it was a no at the end. And now, after taking this course, I’m pretty sure I can make the novel I’d submitted better, so I’m not going to fuss about it until I have revised it one more time.

So – last year I was kind of over-ambitious with my writing goals. I know that I’m not someone who has issues with starting a million things and never finishing anything, so I wasn’t worried about starting a bunch of new projects. I got a lot done, just didn’t quite finish some of them. In any case, 2012 is going to be a year for finishing things, so it’s going to be mostly writing goals:

– Read more female authors. The male authors tend to be more hyped up and I end up reading them first, before the female authors on my TBR list. I have plenty of books to get me through the year if I resolve to read only female authors until 2013.

– Get The Eyelet Dove to final draft.

– Write a query letter and Synopsis for The Eyelet Dove, and submit it to agents.

– Finish the first draft of Handless.

– Win NaNoWriMo for a fourth time running.

– Come up with a better ending for, and finish revising “Codliver Oil”.

With that, I should have a short story and a novel to start submitting, and that will be exciting.  I’m posting a teaser for The Eyelet Dove shortly in the new year – I’m quite happy with my opening chapter now, so keep your eye out for it.